Electronic chassis which house electronic components for high-speed telecommunication and networking applications typically include a plurality of vertically oriented circuit boards commonly referred to as daughtercards. When the daughtercards are fully inserted into the chassis, they are inserted into transition connectors that are mounted on the inside surface of a printed circuit board. The printed circuit board, commonly referred to as a back plane printed circuit board, is positioned along the back side of the electronic chassis.
Each transition connector has a plurality of pins that are inserted into plated thru holes in the back plane printed circuit board. For each transition connector, there is typically a corresponding telephone connector mounted on the outside surface of the back plane printed circuit board. Each telephone connector also has a plurality of pins that are inserted into plated thru holes in the back plane circuit board. The telephone connectors are typically offset from the transition connectors in order to comply with the Bellcore (Bell Communications Research) standards for telecommunications, which set forth the minimum spacing requirements between pads. The telephone connectors receive telephone-input cables, which connect the motherboards mounted in the chassis to a telephone network.
FIG. 9 shows a typical arrangement of a conventional telephone connector 50 offset from a conventional transition connector 52. The disadvantage of this arrangement is that a considerable amount of space is used on the back plane printed circuit board due to the offset configuration. Moreover, as shown in FIG. 9, the offset configuration results in the need for long solder traces to make the electrical connections between pins of the transition connector 52 and the pins of the telephone connector 50. The length of each trace increases manufacturing costs and results in decreased signal integrity. Moreover, due to the minimum space requirements between traces, the traces themselves occupy a considerable amount of space on the back plane printed circuit board.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have an apparatus for mounting a transition connector and a telephone connector back-to-back on a circuit board that overcomes the disadvantages described above.